The journey of the imagination - Parables to teach values
Parables and stories
|
Julio Verne, one of the favorite writers of the young, has nourished with his novels the fantasies of millions of teenagers around the world. Armando José Sequera reminds us that, from the very child dreamed of with the sea, undertake long journeys of adventure. In fact, when he was only eleven years old, one morning ran away from home to gallop, went to the port from the nearest city and embarked as grumete in "The Coralie", a ship heading towards the India.
The young adventurer could not get very far: in the first scale that made the boat, his father, a successful lawyer who had decided, no matter to what he thought of his son, that July to continue the family tradition and was pleaded as he was waiting and as well as it had been his father, the grandfather of July.
For cutting by the healthy child an adventurous effort and punish the audacity of having fled the House, July was punished to a forced diet of only bread and water for ten days and to receive fourteen lashes with a whip in front of the entire family.
When it came to half of whipping, the father stopped the punishment and asked him:
-Do you promise not to travel more than imagination?
He would later become one of the most admired and read around the world, writers had to answer that Yes, hereinafter only would travel with his imagination.
And Julio Verne gave rein to your imagination and creativity. His extraordinary imagination was guiding his pen and one after another were born 65 novels which he christened as "Extraordinary voyages". From its French desk, I ventured through the jungles of the Orinoco, turned to the world, penetrated to the center of the Earth, toured the bottom of seas and oceans and even climbed to the Moon ahead of a hundred years to space travel...
The good teacher cultivates the imagination of his students, spurs creativity, you loose the reins of fantasy so Gallop endless trips by exciting and unknown worlds. In this world so cold and materialistic that has reduced life to a mixture of teleconsumo (television and shopping), which denies the utopias and Smothers hope, genuine educators must constantly exercise the ability to imagine and dream of their students. To dream that a better world, where people return to look us in the eyes as brothers and not see us as rivals, threats or enemies is possible. Dream of a lively and relevant, meaningful, education oriented to form autonomous individuals and responsible and caring citizens.
Dream, imagine new worlds and delivered with enthusiasm and determination to make them possible. A dream dreamed by many and the decision to incarnate in life, will soon begin to come true. The great conquests of humanity, began being mere utopian dreams of some visionary. We had to dream of independence, the freedom of slaves... so then they become facts, realities... We dream of many with a world of Justice and solidarity, and it will be possible.
Genuine educators, activists hope, we can not give up the right to imagine and dream, that is the most important of all. It would be terrible if we could not imagine a different world, dream of it as a project and give us their construction with joy and hope. Therefore, against reductionist pragmatism and ramplón of the "I buy, therefore I am" that it is imposed in these days, we lift up our "dream, then I exist". Remember to Fernando Savater: "if we dream that we fly, soon begin to sprout us wings. We'll fly someday". Remember also to Facundo Cabral: "if we let our dreams die, will be poor. If we feed them and strengthened, we will be rich".
Translated for educational purposes.